Name: Banana Filling
Ingredients: 2 egg whites; 1½ cups powdered sugar; bananas, sliced thin or chopped fine; vanilla (optional)

Why it works: Banana and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,430 recipes. Both carry ethyl isobutyrate, which smells fruity, ethereal. The science ↓

Banana Filling

Ingredients

2 egg whites
1½ cups powdered sugar
bananas, sliced thin or chopped fine
vanilla (optional)

Directions

Make the icing

Make an icing by beating the egg whites and gradually adding the powdered sugar until smooth.

Assemble the filling

Spread the icing on the layers of the cake.
Cover the icing thickly and entirely with sliced or chopped bananas.
Optionally, flavor the cake with vanilla.
Frost the top simply.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

Banana + vanillatop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,430 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).
Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together35,032 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Sugar + bananatop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together3,102 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).
Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together122,807 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Egg + vanillatop 23% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together27,347 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Egg whites: Whip into a foam that gives the icing its light, stable structure.
Powdered sugar: Dissolves into the whipped whites to sweeten and thicken the icing smoothly.
Bananas: Add fruity sweetness and moisture to the filling layer.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.